i, umm, knit a blanket.

A story of Syncopation.

The motivation:

This is some sort of mash-up of my adventures in improv quilting and my obsession with making blankets. I finally figured out how to work with many colors at once in an efficient manner and this lovely rustic yarn in amazing tweedy colors that work well together came on the market right when i was ready for exactly this type of designing. [I’ll write a detailed review of the yarn sometime, but I can go ahead and tell you that I love it. The photo below is of some of my current stash.]

The process:

I knit this in strips of varying widths and within strips I had ways to further improvise in smaller ways. Every color choice was made on instinct and all starting/stopping decisions were made in the moment. I might have worked with an idea for a couple of hours of knitting, but when I resumed knitting the next time I’d either continue the motif or just begin doing something else. You can kind of see when this might have happened.

There were always at least two strips being knit at once; flip-flopping between them to keep things interesting. Making some of the strips narrow also allowed this to be a good carry-along project. I could knit on it in meetings and in other “found moments.”

The final step , after seaming, was to add an applied i-cord edging, following this tutorial.

Though this is comprised of a ton of tedious garter stitch, it was incredibly engaging but kept me going because in the moment it required little thought. It was the perfect project for the semester I had. Oy.

This is so amazing. I didn’t know that there were other people that buy yarn the way I do….I need every colour. The owner of the yarn store says I buy yarn like a quilter buys fabric…since I am a quilter I guess that makes sense. Your blanket is so amazing and beautiful. I don’t think I could finish something of that size.

Your blanket is absolutely stunning! If I had made it, I couldn’t stop patting myself on the back!!! What an accomplishment. I love everything about Shelter yarn; I just ordered more for J. Flood’s Pavement scarf. Favorite color???

Wow! I admit I had a hard time envisioning the final blanket as I saw your in-progress shots, but this really is spectacular. The different widths of color that vary so dramatically from one section of the blanket to another make it such a unique and beautiful blanket!

You know, we all will be hitting up Jared Flood’s stuff because of this…I mean, the plum colors go so well with the gray, and that goes so well with the tealish color, and you really need to send Mr Flood this delicious, amazing, imaginative way to use his medium. And an LYS right near me carries the stuff, good gravy, your blanket is a commercial for it.

I have been wanting to try a sweater in Shelter but couldn’t decide which color, so was thinking of just buying one skein of each and then choosing – a very expensive technique! It seemed extravagant, but your wonderful, gorgeous blanket says ‘Go for it. Use all of the colors’. Many thanks.

The blanket is magnificent and very inspiring. I have one question that I hope someone can answer. Why isn’t there a one line overlap on the backside when you change colors? I’d love to know how to do that! Thanks.